Our First Doctor's Experience in Paris

Last Tuesday I noticed a small red streak in one of James's eyes and felt a tickle in my throat that had me wishing I had a cough drop.  Allergies, I thought?

Wednesday morning James complained of a headache and didn't have the energy to walk across the room.  I've learned to check his temperature when he starts whining and complaining about everything.  Yep, fever.

After speed-walking a few miles through Paris running late to meet someone, I noticed I felt really tired and my legs were aching.  Am I that out of shape?  Nope, fever.

Personal Medicine Stash

We both had the same symptoms, but by Thursday afternoon James's fever was high, and most concerning, he had one red eye, and both eyes were dripping tears.  I'm used to James contracting viruses and running high fevers, but the eye thing had never happened before this.  He slept with me Thursday night because K.J. was speaking over the weekend at a men's retreat and we wanted to protect his throat.  James's breathing sounded terrible.  Friday morning, with K.J. needing to leave in 5 hours, I knew we needed a doctor.  Thank God for church family!  

The Lord is so kind in His provision.  I was picturing having to drag myself who didn't feel good and my terribly sick child on public transportation to visit a doctor, and that prospect felt so overwhelming.  But by some miracle the lady in our church helping us was able to find an English-speaking doctor just a 4 minute walk away.  We were so thankful.

Amazing Architecture at the Doctor's Office

We had a great experience and got everything we needed.  James and I are both on the mend.  Here are some details that stand out about our experience:

• K.J. shared about having to pay in cash.  I saw he had a question about how much it cost.  She examined both me and James for 80 euros, which translates to about $98 in the U.S. at this point.  As a comparison, with insurance at home, we would have paid $60 in co-pays, so I didn't think that was a bad price.
• One of the prescriptions for me was for Vitamin C.  I've never been prescribed a vitamin before.
• We had to mix up James's antibiotic.  K.J. went to the pharmacy for us, and when he got back and I pulled out the antibiotic the bottle was filled with powder I had to add water to and shake.
• The unit of measurement for James's antibiotic was kilograms.  I'm not a scientist, but I've never seen this used for liquid before.  Is it because it was weighed out as a powder at first?  I don't know.
• The doctor prescribed a steroid for James's throat, and gave us the dosage in the number of drops.  This was a hard one to figure out.  She wrote out 240 drops, and the medicine came with a dropper measured in gtte, which I haven't completely figured out what that meant either.  I ended up counting out 240 drops into a medicine cup, and it came out at about 1 tsp. so I figured that sounded like a normal dose.  She had written out it was 10 gtte per kilogram, and James weighed 24 kg.  

All in all, the hardest thing about the experience was just the confusion of figuring out strange to us dosing in a language we don't read.  I Google-translated the instructions for mixing up the antibiotic.  Thank God for Google translate!